Technical Lead, External and Scientific Engagement

Job Description

Are you passionate about driving innovation and leading technical initiatives in the realm of AI and IT? Join our company, a premier research-intensive biopharmaceutical organization, where we leverage cutting-edge science to save and improve lives globally. As a Technical Lead, you will play a pivotal role in guiding discovery-driven IT projects, mentoring engineering teams, and ensuring successful project delivery.

Responsibilities

• Lead and own technical execution of discovery IT initiatives and AI projects, from ideation through POC, pilot, and handover to development teams.
• Architect, design, and implement POCs to validate business value, technical feasibility, and scalability for discovery use cases.
• Guide and mentor cross-functional engineering teams (onshore and offshore), providing technical direction, code reviews, best practices, and hands-on support as needed.
• Collaborate closely with business stakeholders, product owners, and research teams to translate scientific and business requirements into technical solutions and project roadmaps.
• Serve as primary technical liaison between business, data science, infrastructure, and offshore development teams to ensure alignment and timely delivery.
• Drive adoption of modern development practices: CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, secure coding standards, and observability.
• Lead technical evaluations and vendor/tool selection related to AI, data platforms, and application infrastructure.
• Provide hands-on development in Python, Node.js/React (or guide developers), and ensure high quality implementation of backend and frontend components.
• Ensure data integrity, lineage, and governance when integrating with systems such as Veeva Vault and enterprise data platforms.
• Oversee deployment and management of solutions on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure), and collaborate with cloud/infrastructure teams for scalability, security, and cost optimization.
• Track and report project status, risks, and mitigation plans to leadership; escalate when necessary.
• Promote knowledge sharing, establish technical standards, and build repeatable patterns for discovery POCs and AI initiatives.

Qualifications

Required

• 10+ years of professional IT experience, with progressively increasing technical and leadership responsibilities.
• Full-stack development
• Frontend technologies: Expertise in modern frontend frameworks such as React (including Hooks, state management libraries, and performance optimization) and experience with rapid prototyping/visualization frameworks like Streamlit for data-driven UIs.
• Backend: Strong experience with Node.js (Express, NestJS or similar), RESTful and GraphQL API design, authentication/authorization (OAuth2, JWT), middleware, and microservices patterns.
• Language proficiency: Advanced Python for backend services, scripting, ML integration, and automation.
• AI / Machine Learning: Practical experience building prototyping and productionizing ML/AI models (supervised, unsupervised, NLP, and generative-model POCs).
• Familiarity with ML frameworks and libraries (PyTorch, Hugging Face, GPPTeal, Claud, Gemini).
• Knowledge of model evaluation, validation, feature engineering, experiment tracking (MLflow), and model deployment patterns.
• Experience integrating AI models into applications and APIs, and working with data scientists on model lifecycle.
• Data engineering & analytics: Hands-on with Databricks/Spark for large-scale data processing.
• ETL/ELT: Experience with dbt (transformations, testing, modularity), building reliable data pipelines and mature data models.
• Databases: Strong SQL skills and experience with Oracle (query tuning, schema design, indexing), plus familiarity with modern analytical stores (Snowflake, Redshift) is a plus.
• Data governance: Knowledge of lineage, cataloging, metadata, quality checks, and compliance in regulated environments.
• Integration & domain systems: Understanding of Vault architecture, document and metadata models, Vault APIs, Vault SDKs and integration patterns for ingesting, synchronizing, and securing regulated content.
• API integrations: Robust experience in designing integrations between cloud services, SaaS systems, and on-prem systems; message queues and streaming (Kafka, SQS, Event Hubs) knowledge preferred.
• Cloud platforms: Strong practical experience with AWS and/or Azure (compute, storage, networking, IAM, managed data services).
• Infrastructure as Code: Experience with Terraform, ARM templates, or CloudFormation for reproducible environments.
• Containerization & orchestration: Docker and Kubernetes (deployment patterns, Helm charts, observability).
• Security & compliance: Identity and access control, encryption in transit/at rest, secrets management, and secure deployment practices.
• CI/CD: Design and implement pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI) for build, test, security scanning, and deploy across environments.
• Automated testing: Unit, integration, contract, and end-to-end tests; test frameworks for Python/Node/React.
• Observability: Logging, monitoring, alerting (ELK/Elastic Stack, Prometheus, Grafana), and tracing (OpenTelemetry).
• GitHub/Git workflows: Branching strategies, pull request policies, code review best practices, dependency management.
• Collaboration tools: Jira/Azure DevOps for backlog and sprint management, Confluence or similar for documentation.
• System architecture: Design scalable, resilient microservices and data pipelines; trade-off analysis for latency, throughput, cost, and security.
• API-first design: Contract-first development, versioning, backward compatibility.
• Event-driven architecture: Designing loosely coupled services using events/streams.
• Scalability and performance: Load testing, caching strategies, database partitioning/sharding, query optimization.
• Experience coordinating and leading offshore development teams and third-party vendors, with demonstrated success in distributed team delivery.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills; ability to translate technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Strong problem solving, architectural design, and decision-making skills.
• Knowledge of data governance, security and compliance requirements relevant to discovery and regulated industries.

Preferred

• Prior experience in life sciences or pharmaceutical discovery IT or closely related scientific domains, with an understanding of discovery workflows, data sensitivity, and regulatory considerations.
• Demonstrated experience working on AI/ML projects using common frameworks and tooling, for example: MLflow for experiment tracking, TensorFlow or PyTorch for model development, and Hugging Face or similar libraries for NLP/transformer work.
• Hands-on familiarity with modern data platforms and analytics warehouses such as Databricks, or equivalent cloud-native data stores.
• Experience deploying and managing ML workloads on cloud ML platforms (AWS SageMaker, Azure ML, or equivalent), including model training, tuning, serving, and monitoring in production.
• Proven track record of delivering software products using Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban), including hands-on experience managing product backlogs, running sprint ceremonies, and working closely with product owners and stakeholders.
• Prior experience integrating or implementing regulated content systems (e.g., Veeva Vault) within discovery or R&D environments is a plus.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) for scalable application and model deployments.
• Familiarity with MLOps practices and tooling (CI/CD for ML, model governance, automated testing for models, model drift detection).
• Strong knowledge of data privacy, security, and compliance standards relevant to life sciences (e.g., data encryption, access controls, auditability).
• Experience leading or coordinating distributed and offshore engineering teams in multi-vendor environments.

What we offer

• Exciting work in a great team, global projects, international environment
• Opportunity to learn and grow professionally within the company globally
• Hybrid working model, flexible role pattern
• Competitive salary & incentive pay
• Pension and health insurance contributions
• Internal reward system and referral scheme
• 5 weeks annual leave, 5 sick days, 15 days of certified sick leave paid above statutory requirements annually, 40 paid hours annually for volunteering activities, 12 weeks of parental contribution
• Cafeteria for tax free benefits according to your choice (meal vouchers, sport, culture, health, travel, etc.), Multisport Card
• Vodafone, Raiffeisen Bank, Foodora, and discount programmes
• Up-to-date laptop and iPhone
• Parking in the garage, showers, refreshments, massage chairs, library, music corner

Ready to take up the challenge? Apply now! Know anybody who might be interested? Refer this job!

Required Skills:

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Application Infrastructure, Clinical Development, Computer Science, Data Engineering, Data Governance, Data Visualization, Design Applications, Enterprise Data, Project Delivery, Rapid Prototyping, Secure Deployment, Software Configurations, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Solution Architecture, SQL Optimization, System Designs, System Integration, Technical Leadership, Terraform (Software), Testing

Preferred Skills:

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Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

25%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

1st - Day

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

05/2/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.